1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to detectors for detecting the occurrence of all ones or all zeros in a binary word, and particularly to such a detector that may be easily compiled using a chip layout design program, or silicon compiler.
2. State of the Art
Detectors of the foregoing type are widely used in microprocessors and the like, for example to detect overflow of an accumulator or to detect the occurrence of a zero value in the accumulator. All ones detectors and all zeros detectors may together be referred to as "all-bits-equal" detectors. Circuits for implementing all-bits-equal detectors are known in the art. Such circuits have generally not been readily compilable using compiler programs. For compilability, such a detector circuit should be fast, dense and regular in its layout. The present invention provides a detector circuit that exhibits each of these features.